


Little Chick in a Nest

by Zahri



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Gen, The move to St Petersburg, ballet nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-22 21:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23100835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zahri/pseuds/Zahri
Summary: It took Victor an embarrassing amount of time to connect “Minako-sensei, Yuuri’s ice-skating obsessed ballet teacher who owns a snack bar to help make ends meet” with “Okukawa Minako, prima ballerina and winner of the Benois de la Danse”.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri & Okukawa Minako
Comments: 34
Kudos: 212





	Little Chick in a Nest

It took Victor an embarrassing amount of time to connect “Minako-sensei, Yuuri’s ice-skating obsessed ballet teacher who owns a snack bar to help make ends meet” with “Okukawa Minako, prima ballerina and winner of the Benois de la Danse”. It wasn’t until the move to St Petersburg that Victor finally worked it out.

In Victor’s defence, dancers of Minako’s calibre didn’t usually end up teaching the local children in sleepy little seaside towns like Hasetsu. The rest of his delay in realising probably stemmed from his habit of not registering things that were outside of his tight focus of attention. Minako and Yuuri never mentioned the fact; the statue just sat there, in the studio, on a shelf. It was clearly just part of the background to everyone else.

Yuuri’s training environment in Hasetsu was cobbled together favours from family friends. He had as much dance studio time as he wanted because Minako was Hiroko’s best friend from high school. He had more ice time than most people could afford because Ice Castle Hasetsu was owned and run by Yuuri’s best friends and their parents. Yuuri didn’t have a professional athletic trainer; it was his old rival and friend Takeshi who bullied him through off-ice workouts and helped him stretch out. It was all small town and charming and completely alien to Victor, coming from a city like St Petersburg, where it was your results, your talent, and your money that brought you the best facilities.

Access to resources seemed to be what was magical in Hasetsu, rather than the quality of them. The rink was old and small. The gym room had a minimum of equipment. Minako’s studio had a good quality dance floor, but only one room. It just wasn’t the place you’d expect to find international level instruction.

Minako had made several excited and snarky comments to both of them as they packed for the move about how much good she thought Russian training and discipline would do for Yuuri’s dance form. What Victor heard in those comments was the fond wishes of a teacher watching her student excel and exceed her.

Despite knowing that Yuuri had survived and thrived over 5 years living and training in America, Victor was terrified that the move to St Petersburg was going to break the magic that had held Yuuri together for the past 8 months and brought him to a new level.

And there was nothing more terrifying than the prospect of Yuuri meeting Lilia Baranovskaya.

* * *

Victor first met Lilia Baranovskaya as an awkward 12 year old, when Yakov Feltsman had first scouted him and agreed to take him on as a Junior for the following season. She had seemed terrifying and distant and part of a constellation of gods that had agreed that he might, he just might, show some potential as a figure skater. If he worked extremely hard and followed all orders.

Even years down the track, when he had eaten family meals across a table from her, been placed in her custody for supervision at international competitions, had fought and collaborated with her over his choreography, Victor still felt that quiet shiver in his heart when looking at her. A goddess of dance had looked at him and judged him worth training. He had watched many other students go through that same sheer terror at meeting her, at being taught by Lilia Baranovskaya, of the Bolshoi Ballet. 

So. If Victor was talking Yuuri up. If he had a front of bravado about this introduction. If he was reassuring his fiancé that it would all be ok, that Lilia was really soft on the inside, just like Yakov, it was in the full knowledge of Yuuri’s anxiety and the likelihood that Lilia would look down her nose, sniff, and then tear Yuuri’s form to pieces.

* * *

Yuuri met Lilia like thus. 

Yuuri had bowed as he had stepped into the studio then looked straight at Lilia Baranovskaya. He had taken a sealed envelope out of his pocket and passed it to her with another bow, saying “My teacher asks that you take care of me” in accented French, then retreated to a corner to put his bag down and sort out his shoes.

Lilia had looked down her nose at Yuuri as she slit open the envelope, holding a hand up to forestall Victor’s sudden urge to explain that he has no idea what just happened. She read the note, folded it back up, and then walked over to Yuuri, where she tapped him on the head with the paper.

“So. You are Minako’s boy,” Lilia said, as Yuuri looked up at her. “She says she expects updates on your form. Foolishness. As if I would let one of my students become lazy. Did you pick up bad habits while in America, Katsuki?”

“No Madame,” said Yuuri modestly, checking the fit of his shoes one more time, then standing up.

Lilia sniffed and sent him over to the barre to warm up. “We shall see. Now.”

Yuuri did not seem terrified by this, in the way that Victor had seen so many other students become when faced with The Lilia Baranovskaya about to analyse their form for the first time. As Victor had felt himself as a gangly 12 year old. He seemed quiet and centred within himself, with a sense of peace Victor normally saw while Yuuri skated figures on a darkened rink.

It was at this point that Victor realised that he had lost all control of the situation as well as any concept about what was about to happen.

* * *

What Victor hadn’t realised?

“Celestino Cialdini made sure I had studio access for regular training and I saw visiting teachers” is what Yuuri had told him about his dance cross-training in Detroit, when Victor had asked him about it way back in June.

What Victor discovered over the course of the next hour, as Lilia questioned Yuuri while putting him through a gruelling analysis of his form and snapping at him for every imperfect twitch, was that Yuuri had not said “I was so lost the first few weeks of class in Detroit because my instructor had barely made a correction to what I was doing. I started to believe that she had decided I was so hopeless that I was not worth the time to correct. It took Minako less than half an hour to break through my bluster during a Skype call she made to check on my adjustment to America, and suddenly after that the head of the ballet school dropped in to check on my class and I had visiting primas turning up to rip apart my form.”

What Yuuri had not said was “An old colleague of Minako’s used to travel several hours every month to put the fear of god into me and the instructors supervising me, and to ensure I wasn’t developing any bad habits”.

What Yuuri had not said was “I have never done ballet in circumstances where a terrifying old prima wasn’t cataloguing every flaw and despairing over the fact that I had chosen figure skating instead.”

* * *

“So. You’re not completely hopeless,” was Lilia’s judgement at the end of the session. Yuuri looked hot but less blown than was usual for someone who had endured that much of Lilia’s close attention. “Okukawa has spoiled you in the past few months. Your technical form is sloppy. I wouldn’t let you near the corps de ballet until you tightened it up. You spend too much time on the ice for a proper danseur.”

“I apologise. Figure skating owns my soul,” was what Yuuri somehow thought was the right thing to say to Lilia Baranovskaya after that string of corrections.

But apparently it was a correct answer, as Lilia gave him a small smile and dictated “You have class here three times per week. Do not expect me to go easy on you just because your mentor asked a favour of another old prima.”

“I would never,” Yuuri replied, his eyes wide and his face soft, ducking into a hasty bow.

Lilia looked over at Victor, judgement all over her face. “And as for you, Victor Alexandrovich Nikiforov. Do not think yourself forgiven for running away this season just because you brought me back Minako Okukawa’s best student. I am already too busy with young Plisetsky for the worry this will cause me.”

Which, of course, meant he was forgiven. Once she spent the next few months extracting her vengeance from his hide.


End file.
